Saturday, September 13, 2008

The Hill

John is always saying that we need to go back to Italy. Today, we went the The Hill District of St. Louis. Italian immigrants began settling the area in the 1890s, drawn by the promise of work in the coal mines and clay factories. The housing conditions were very poor until the turn of the century, when one story, 4 room brick houses began making their appearance. There is an interesting variety of houses there now.

It is a quaint Italian neighborhood, with lots of fine Italian restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores – the likes of which I haven’t seen anywhere outside of New York. We found a nice restaurant, Zia’s, that was packed even at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. Tables filled with big extended families passing babies around. John had ravioli and I had some kind of mosticolli dish. We bought lots of stuff at Viviano's grocery store to bring home - more ravioli, gravy, cheese, wine ...) John says that having food like this in the refrigerator is like having a gold mine!